Cwyn y Gwynt (The Wind’s Lament) by John Morris-Jones

Sooner tears than sleep this midnight
Come into my eyes.
On my window the complaining
Tempest groans and sighs.

Grows the noise now of its weeping,
Sobbing to and fro –
On the glass the tears come hurtling
Of some wildest woe.

Why, O wind against my window,
Come you grief to prove?
Can it be your heart’s gone grieving
For its own lost love?

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By John Morris-Jones
(1864 – 1929)
translated by Tony Conran

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Additional information: Sir John Morris-Jones (17 October 1864 – 16 April 1929) was a Welsh grammarian, academic and Welsh-language poet. In 1889 Morris-Jones was appointed as a lecturer in Welsh at the University College of North Wales, Bangor (now Bangor University) where he was promoted to professor in 1895, a post he held until his death. Morris-Jones worked to standardise Welsh orthography.

Beneath is the original Welsh language version of the poem.

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Cwyn y Gwynt

Cwsg ni ddaw i’m hamrant heno,
Dagrau ddaw ynghynt.
Wrth fy ffenestr yn gwynfannus
Yr ochneidia’r gwynt.

Codi’i lais yn awr, ac wylo,
Beichio wylo mae;
Ar y grwydr yr hyrddia’i ddagrau
Yn ei wylltaf wae.

Pam y deui, wynt, i wylo
At fy ffenestr i?
Dywed im, a gollaist tithau
Un a’th garai di?

‘It’s February. Weeping take ink’ by Boris Pasternak

 It's February. Weeping take ink.
 Find words in a sobbing rush
 For February, while black spring
 Burns through the rumbling slush.
 
 
 And take a cab. Ride for a rouble
 Through wheel racket and bell's throbbing
 To where the downpour makes more din
 Than the sound of ink and sobbing;
 
 
 Where rooks in thousands, like charred pears
 Windfallen from their branching skies,
 Drop into puddles and bring down
 Desolution into deep eyes.
 
 
 Thawed patches underneath show black,
 The wind is furrowed with cries, and then,
 The more suddenly the more surely,
 Verses sob from the pen.
 
 
 By  Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к
 (Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
 (1912)
 translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France 

Willow by Anna Akhmatova

In the young century’s cool nursery,

In its checkered silence, I was born.

Sweet to me was not the voice of man,

But the wind’s voice was understood by me.

The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,

But I loved the silver willow best of all.

And, grateful for my love, it lived

All its life with me, and with its weeping

Branches fanned my insomnia with dreams. But

– Surprisingly enough! – I have outlived

It. Now, a stump’s out there. Under these skies,

Under these skies of ours, are other

Willows, and their alien voices rise.

And I am silent… As though I’d lost a brother.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova), 1940

– from Тростник (Reed) / Из шести книг (From the Sixth Book)

– translation by D. M. Thomas